


Any Other Name

by PeekabooFang



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Killing Joke (Comics), Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Genre: 1950s, Crossover, F/M, False Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 03:22:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12448635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeekabooFang/pseuds/PeekabooFang
Summary: Anyone out there equally obsessed with the novelLolitaand Joker's origin story fromThe Killing Joke?If so, this slice of madness could be for you!





	Any Other Name

Jeannie rest her chin on her open palm as she heard his tread on the steps outside. She tried to look relaxed, without a care in the world. However, the fingers lightly drumming the kitchen table would have given her away had Jack noticed when he came in.

Yet Jeannie could see from her sidelong glance that he was too distracted, too _nervous_ to take in little details right now.

“Hey, baby,” he said, absently kissing her on the forehead as he unloosed his tie and took off his hat.

“Mmm,” Jeannie replied with a slightly furrowed brow. _He hasn't looked me in the eye once since he came in._

She continued watching him as he took off his jacket, placing it on the back of the chair. The lightbulb buzzed disconcertingly above the table, the light dimming as was its wont.

Husband and wife both agreed that maybe the sad lighting was all for the better here; that way, they could see less of the miserable little cramped apartment with its mildewed floors, stained walls, leaky faucets, their laundry hanging from the line overhead, and not to mention the stellar view out the window of a massive brick wall.

Yet the poor lighting couldn't block out the relentless whine of police sirens always screeching down the avenue, the honking cars, the express as it chugged down the tracks, the randy laughs and coughs of drunk johns, biting rejoinders from ladies of the night, and other various domestic disputes around the dilapidated apartment complex.

But here, in the mellow dark gold gloom of the kitchen light, Jack and Jeannie Napier could sit down and get lost together, at home in the silence of the private jokes they shared with just each other.

Jack scooted his chair closer to her. He placed a hand on her protruding belly, covered by her cotton nightgown under her bathrobe. “How's Junior?”

“All quiet on the Western front,” she responded, placing her hand over his. “Though that hasn't curbed my appetite any. I finished off the yogurt in the fridge.”

Jack was staring at the table, eyes glassy. “Mm-hmm,” was his less than attentive answer.

She tilted her head, narrowed gray eyes studying him carefully. “Jack? Something on your mind?”

His eyes shot up to hers with a jolt, and she was taken aback by the wild, bewildered look there: as if she'd caught him in the middle of a frame-up. “Um, what? Oh, no, honey. Sorry, I'm just...just thinking of our perilous finances, as always.” He squeezed her hand reassuringly, but went back to studying the invisible point on the table that seemed to take up so much of his attention.

 _Surely I'm more interesting than a splintered old card table,_ she reasoned to herself. She cleared her throat. _Maybe it's time to grab his attention with a little something else._ “Say,” she said oh-so casually, reaching into the pocket of her bathrobe. “Um, I found something in the paper today that might be of some interest.” Mimicking her husband, she avoided eye contact as she handed him the clipping. “Might be worth a look.” She hoped her shrug straddled that fine line between “hey-no-big-deal-it's-not-like-I-think-the-future-of-our-family-depends-on-this” and “but-you-never-know-please-please-give-it-a-chance”.

Jack, still wearing his expression of puzzled trepidation, looked from her to the clipping. “Lab assistant needed for chemical department in pharmaceutical company,” he read aloud. He also read the required qualifications and list of expected duties.

All fit his experience precisely.

Yet what really caused the blood to pump in his temples was the salary.

“That's almost double what I made at Gotham Chemical,” he whispered.

Jeannie fidgeted, betraying her facade of nonchalance. She spoke quickly. “Yeah, I noticed that. I thought—well, I thought that, well”--she stumbled over her words. _You thought_ what? _That hey, Jack, I know it's been your dream and all to be a comedian since you were a kid and that's why you left Gotham Chemical to begin with, and that's how we met, and you said you'd rather die than go back to that life in the lab—but hey, how about it? Because we're poor as shit so you should totally give up your dream. Sound good?_

 _This is such bullshit,_ Jeannie thought. _I never should have brought it up. Now he'll get frustrated and sad and think I don't believe in him. I never should have shown it to him. I never should have--_

“It's perfect,” Jack breathed.

“...What?” She blinked.

He finally looked her fully in the eye, and she almost gasped at the change in his look. Her sweetie didn't exactly have the looks of a matinee idol, but the ecstatic gleam in his eyes and the renewed energy in his features almost made him halfway good-looking.

He looked like a drowning man thrown a landline. “It's _perfect!_ Oh, Jeannie, this could fix everything! We could get out of here, and I wouldn't have to”--he swallowed suddenly, and for the briefest of moments looked away from her once more. “...I wouldn't have to humiliate myself on stage every night.”

Jeannie was surprised. I mean, she _wanted_ Jack to go for the job, but he was acting like his dream meant nothing. “Yeah, but honey, you've wanted to do comedy for so long! Are you sure you want to give it up? You could still work at it on nights or on weekends.”

“Hm?” Jack asked distractedly, still happily scanning the ad. He waved his hand at her. “Eh, I guess I could. Not important, not important.”

Jeannie shook her head, disbelieving. “Not _important?”_

Before she could speak again, her heart skipped a beat as she saw his expression fall dramatically. The warmth left his eyes as he narrowed in on something in the clipping. He made sure to empty his face of any particular look. He said rapidly, “Jeannie, this job is in Metropolis.”

Jeannie started. “What? Metropolis? Where, where does it say that?”

She leaned over and looked to where Jack pointed. In small block letters at the corner of the ad read the words METROPOLIS MEDICINES INC.

Jeannie leaned back in her chair, deflated. “But...but it was in the _Gotham Gazette.”_

Jack looked like a broken ventriloquist's dummy. His eyes were tired, so tired. “Sometimes Metropolis and Gotham take turns advertising in the other's papers, just to get more applicants.” He rubbed his eyes, resigned. “I can't commute to Metropolis each day. I can barely afford taking the bus to nightclubs here in town. And forget settling down there. In Metropolis? That would take about a year's pay, even with this salary.”

“Even if it's a small apartment?” Jeannie asked in a tiny voice.

Jack stood suddenly, movements agitated. “Nope,” he said bluntly. A bone in his lower jaw twitched. The movement made Jeannie shiver involuntarily, as it reminded her of—she shook her head. “I-I'm sorry, Jack. I didn't see. But we'll be okay! I know we will. It just takes a while to make that big break, that's all.”

“It's taken me a year and a half,” he muttered, staring morosely out the window.

“Oh, I'm sure that's nothing compared to what most people”--

 _“Most people aren't moronic enough to pursue a dead-end career when they have a wife who's expecting a baby.”_ He shut his eyes, breathing in. _Calm down, Jack. Calm down. She's trying to help._

Holding back tears he stumbled forward, kissing her on the forehead once more. “I'm sorry, Jeannie. I've snapped at you again. I need to pull myself together.” He let out a shuddering breath. “I think, I-I think I'm going to turn in early.”

“Don't you want something to eat? I could heat you up the rest of that shrimp scampi if you like.”

He shook his head, ruffling her blonde hair, where the natural brown roots were beginning to show. He headed with leaden steps toward their fold-out bed in the corner, separated by a long curtain. “You coming in?”

Jeannie stared at her hands, folded on the table. “No, not yet. I think I'll stay up a little longer. I'm so sorry, Jack.”

“Don't worry about it, baby love,” Jack said. “None of this is your fault.” He closed the curtain behind him.

 

He lay on his side on the cramped cot, staring into the darkness. _God dammit. God fucking dammit. God fucking dammit dammit DAMMIT._

He bit his knuckles, turning the scream he had been about to release into a dull growl.

Hopefully Jeannie would just think he was snoring.

There went his last hope. And tomorrow? Tomorrow he would have to go and face those thugs, and tell them yes, he would do whatever job they wanted. But at least...at least, if everything went well, he and Jeannie would be better off even than if he _had_ taken the job at the pharmaceutical company. Or else they maybe _could_ go to Metropolis with the dough he'd earn, and he _could_ take that job....

As Jack drifted into an uneasy sleep, he was plagued by that one solitary thought:

_But what if the job with the thugs goes wrong?_

 

 _Stellar work, just stellar,_ Jeannie berated herself, burning inside. _What sort of moron doesn't think to check where the job's located? Stupid. Stupid, stupid._

Nothing in their year of marriage of constant struggles with money and housing had stung Jeannie to the quick like watching her stupid oversight cause the life light to go out of her husband's eyes like that.

 _That_ was _my fault. And I've got to make it right._

She was determined, but still she hesitated. _I mean, it is a long shot, after all...after almost three years without a word from me, what's to keep him from telling me to eff off? Or even reply at all?_

She stared at the drawer underneath the cutting board, where the typewriter was. _And God, what if he_ does _reply? I mean, it would be great if that meant he was going to give it to us, but what if he just...just, I dunno, acts like himself and drives me crazy? Or brings up the past, asks who--_

She was on the verge of talking herself out of it before she heard Jack snore behind the curtain.

_No. No, you owe it to Jack._

As quietly as she could, she pulled out the typewriter. She placed it on the table. She stared for a few silent moments at the empty page, the only sound the buzzing of the lightbulb above and the muffled snores of her husband.

Then she began. “DEAR DAD....”

 

Humbert slumped against the letterboxes, missive from Fowler forgotten as he gazed entranced and desolate at the note in his hand:

“DEAR DAD:  
How's everything? I'm married. I'm going to have a baby. I guess he's going to be a big one. I guess he'll come right for Christmas. This is a hard letter to write. I'm going nuts because we don't have enough to pay our debts and get out of here. Jack has a chance for a big job in Metropolis as a lab assistant at a pharmaceutical company, that's all I know about it but it's really grand. He's tried to make a go at being a comedian, but it's tough out there. He's really funny, but you just can't get steady work that way. Pardon me for withholding our home address but you may still be mad at me, and Jack must not know. This town is something. You can't see the morons for the smog. Please do send us a check, Dad. We could manage with three or four hundred or even less, anything is welcome, you might sell my old things, because once we get there the dough will just start rolling in. Write, please. I have gone through much sadness and hardship.  
Yours expecting,  
JEANNIE (MRS. JACK NAPIER)  
P.S. I go by Jeannie now. It was just easier to avoid certain people that way.”

The letter was dated September 18, 1952. Today was the twenty-second. The address she gave was “General Delivery, Gotham.”

_Gotham._

_About 800 miles away._

He was on the road within half an hour.

With him was his little black chum, nestled cozily in his coat pocket. He couldn't wait to meet Jack Napier.

 

A look in the phonebook, a call to a dead relative's furniture store, and a visit to old neighbors released the desired information of where Mr. and Mrs. Napier now lived.

In the corrupted heart of an overindustrialzed town, Humbert Humbert climbed up the creaking steps to the most terrifying tenement he'd ever seen. A man with his jacket buttoned unevenly vomited in the sidewalk outside the door when Humbert entered. Broken glass littered the floor to the right of the stairway.

Just as he reached the top step, a grizzed old lady in a pink bathrobe poked her head out the door on the first floor suspiciously, clutching a leering old pervert of a cat, eyes gluey and vacant.

Seven steps down the hall. Hollow knock on the door. Shuffled sounds within, then woosh-woof went the door.

Couple of inches taller. Face a trifle longer. New blonde streaked hair, long and lank, bangs pulled back by two long light blue hairpins. The color matched the moth-eaten house coat she wore over a starch-white cotton gown. She was frankly and hugely pregnant. Her pale freckled cheeks were hollowed, and her bare shins had lost all their tan, so that the little hairs showed. She wore floppy felt slippers.

“We—e—ell!” She exclaimed, face an open book of surprise and welcome.

“Husband at home?” He shivered, and felt the trigger within his pocket.

 _I cannot kill_ her, _of course. I love her. It is love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight._

“Come in,” she said, standing back.

And so Jeannie Napier nee Dolores Haze allowed in her erstwhile stepfather. The door shut out the bushy brown cat peering around the corner of the doorframe. “No, you stay out,” she ordered the feline, sending him back to his compatriot downstairs.

Humbert took in the apartment, the light from the window illuminating every web of brown mildew at the corners of the kitchen tile, the hose and underwear on the line on the wall, the grubby cabinet mirror that reflected his face with ghoulish shadows from where it was situated behind his Lolita as she sat at the kitchen table.

“Jack's at an audition, I guess, at a nightclub. Boy, am I surprised to see you,” she said with a forced laugh. She scratched her hand nervously, a movement he recognized from her youth when he'd flirt with her. He knew it as a sign that he was getting too close, and that she was trying to dig herself out from beneath his probing gaze.

And yet still he did gaze. _Curious: although actually her looks have faded, I've definitely realized, so hopelessly late in the day, how much she looks—has always looked—like Botticelli's Venus—the same soft nose, the same blurred beauty._ The resemblance was especially heightened now with her new hair color.

His eyes fell on the chest of drawers to the left of the kitchen table. A grainy photo rested there of Lo standing side-by-side with a tall young man. Humbert picked it up and studied it. The man was ungainly with a long lantern jaw, eyes squinting uneasily into the camera; nonetheless, he looked happy and not unlikable, though certainly not handsome. His Jeannie was beside him, dressed in her Sunday best.

“That's us outside of the town hall on our wedding day,” Lo narrated from the table. “Can't make out the building, of course. Not that it's a big tragedy or anything. Place isn't exactly the Grand Canyon.”

“That's not the fellow I want,” was Humbert's only comment.

She froze, annoyed. “Not _who?”_

“Where is he? Quick!”

“Look,” she said, inclining her head, shaking it. “Look, you are not going to bring that up.”

“I certainly am,” he said, oddly exhilarated that she was bristling at him again, as if she were still his.

But she was wise now, and controlled herself.

“Listen,” she said evenly. “Jack does not know a thing of the whole mess. He thinks you're my father. He thinks I ran away from an upper-class home just to wash dishes and wait at some seedy dive. He thinks my name's Jeannie Brown—I chose Jeannie because I'd frosted my hair light brown before I reached Gotham and it reminded me of the song. I was blonde by the time we met. He'd just quit Gotham Chemical to become a comedian, and was booked at the restaurant I was working at. He appeared the whole week, even though he kept bombing. But he always made me laugh, somehow. He just had a way about him...anyway, one night after the show he came to the kitchen and started playing cards with me. He'd always roll his eyes and sigh all exaggerated whenever he got the Joker in the deck”--her eyes were smiling. But then they dimmed. “So why should you want to make things harder than they are by raking up all that muck?”

“But,” Humbert said, unknowingly imitating her husband's earlier movements by scraping his chair closer to hers until they were but a few breaths apart, “You must be sensible, you must be a sensible girl, you must understand that if you expect the help I have come to give, I must have at least a clear comprehension of the situation.” He spoke in the sing-song staccato rhythm of a madman. “Come, his name!”

“Look, it's not important,” she said, inspecting her cuticles. “I suggest you skip it. Want a cigarette?”

“No. His name.”

She shook her head with great resolution. “I guess it's too late to raise hell and you'd never believe it anyway. I barely believe it, and I was there.”

“Well,” He said, getting up, “I'd better go. Regards. Nice to have seen you.”

She sighed and made a face. “Oh for crying out—really, it's useless. I'm not gonna tell. Okay, all right, all right, don't go!” Her face was flush. “Do you really want to know who it was? Well, it was Clare Quilty.”

Waterproof.

He sat back down in the chair. Leadenly. “Clare Quilty?” He asked weakly.

She picked up a potato she had stopped peeling when he came in and started at it again. As she spoke, she followed the spiral of the departing skin with her dreamy melancholy eyes. “Yeah. Clare Quilty, the nephew of that fat dentist from Ramsdale. Jesus, can you believe it? He's a huge deal playwright, you know. Real genius of a guy. He spoke at that stupid book club of Mother's years ago when I was about ten, and he'd tugged and pulled me down in his lap and kissed me in front of everyone. Boy, was I furious. But when we met again at Beardsley when I was in that play of his, I was a goner. Like everyone else, I fell for him. Hard. And he is such a peculiar genius that he knew about you and me right away. Laughed liked the dickens when I told him, and said he had you pegged from the start. Gee, we had fun back then. I mean, it was horrid of me to make you believe he was an old woman, and all of that. The road trip was his idea.

“From the hospital in Elephant Stone—or whatever the hell that town was called—he took me to some dude ranch with some friends of his. Real sketchy affair, of course. I learned quickly how perverted the whole set-up was. Wanted me to tangle around nude with two girls, two boys, and three or four men while some old lady took movie pictures. Yikes. I told him right away, hell, no, I'm not going to do these wretched things because I just want you. Well,” she shrugged. “He threw me out.”

“What things exactly did he want you to do?”

“Oh, things...Oh, I—really I”--she broke off, pained. “Nope, I can't go into details. Not with this baby inside me.”

Humbert smiled wistfully at her logic.

“Anyway,” she said shakily. “I refused to blow his beastly boys so he threw me out. That winter ‘49, Fay and I found jobs. For almost two years I had—oh, just drifted, doing some restaurant work in small places, then--”

She took a deep breath.

“Then Fay tried to go back. She called me and said the ranch was burned to the ground. But as she had left town, she had seen one of the guys working at a gas station. He almost beat the shit out of her. Really scared the daylights out of her. Threatened her not to tell anybody about the ranch, about them. I was nervous at that time about you finding me or Clare finding me, so decided then and there to go by Jeannie. You know, my hair and all. But I got spooked – I thought I saw somebody who might have been at the ranch in the diner -- and I moved even farther away to Gotham, and dyed my hair again. That's when I met Jack.”

“Where is he?”

“Jack? I told you, at an audition”--

_“No. Him.”_

“I have no idea,” she said honestly. “In New York, I guess. I could look him up and find him in a second if I wanted he's so famous, but I can truly say I do not give a rat's ass anymore. And he was the first man I was ever crazy about.”

“What about...” Humbert indicated the picture on the chest of drawers.

Jeannie stared at him steadily. “Jack is the only man I've ever really _loved.”_

Her unblinking, truthful gaze was too much for Humbert. He couldn't even ask if he himself had ever counted. Instead he doubled over into his hands and started crying, great choking sobs.

Jeannie was shocked out of her memories and compassion took over. She reached for his hand.

“I'll die if you touch me!” Humbert said, wincing away from her. He knew it was hopeless, he knew it, he knew it, yet hope clung to him like an oxygen tent, and he said, “Lolita, this may be neither here nor there but I have to say it. Life is very short. From here to that old car you know so well there is a stretch of twenty, twenty-five paces. It is a very short walk down these rickety stairs. Make those twenty-five steps. Now. Right now. Come just as you are. And we shall live happily ever after.”

She coiled upward like a snake, gray eyes venomous. “You mean you will give us that money only if I go with you to a motel. Is that it?”

“No,” he cried out, shaking his head as tears coursed down his cheeks. “You got it all wrong. I want you to leave your incidental Jack, and this awful hole, and come to live with me, and die with me, and everything with me.”

“You're crazy,” she said, but not unkindly. She truly thought he was out of his goddamned mind.

He made a valiant effort to get his next words out with some semblance of dry dignity. “Don't worry. If you refuse, you will still get your... _trousseau._ ”

“No kidding?” asked Jeannie.

He handed her the envelope. She tentatively opened it, feeling a little self-conscious that she was so eager when he was such a wreck.

But she counted, and she turned pink. “You mean,” she said, staring deeply at him, “You are giving us _four thousand bucks?”_

She immediately sprang forward as he burst into fresh sobs. “Oh, please stop crying. You should understand. I think—oops--” the envelope had slid to the floor. She grabbed it and put it back on the table. “I think it's oh utterly _grand_ of you to give us all that dough. It settles everything, Jack can call Metropolis tonight. Oh, don't cry, I'm so sorry I cheated so much but that's the way things are.”

As Humbert applied his handkerchief to his face, struggling to bring himself back from the brink of hysteria, Jeannie exulted to herself silently. No way Jack wouldn't get the job. He's the most qualified guy she knows. She had to tell him. Not about Humbert, of course, but she'd make up some dead relative—oh boy, where was he today? What club? She could ask Louie, the guy who books acts and see from there. She had to call him.

She was brought back to the present as Humbert stood unsteadily. “You're going already?”

“Yes, yes,” Humbert said, eyes unfocused and red. “I have to go immediately, immediately. I'm also leaving you the car. I can go by bus.”

“Oh, no, don't worry about that,” Jeannie said. “Transit system's great around Metropolis, and if this company's anything like Gotham Chemical, Jack could probably get a company car.” Jeannie lacked precise insight into how pharmaceutical companies ran their businesses.

“Then I shall buy this one from you for five hundred dollars.”

“At this rate we'll be millionaires next, Junior,” she said ecstatically to her pregnant tum.

The door was open now, he was in the hallway. “One last word,” he said, straightening himself, eloquent and Byronic. “Are you quite, quite sure that—well, not tomorrow, of course, and not after tomorrow, but—well, some day, any day, you will not come to live with me?”

The warm, motherly, utterly womanly wide smile that graced her face was new to him. It was a sunrise in facial form. “No,” she said through this radiant beam, “No, honey, no.”

She had never called him honey before.

“Goodbye,” he whispered.

She stood up on her tiptoes and pecked him quickly on his wet cheek, almost killing him. Once the cloud cleared from his eyes, he lurched down the hall. He heard the door shut, then the last he ever heard from Dolores Jeannie Brown Haze Napier was her golden giggle from within her apartment. It was the first time he had heard her youthful and careless since before his wretchedness had tainted her.

And presently he was driving through Gotham rain, unable to cope with his tears. His little black chum sat waiting, waiting for its introduction to Claire Quiltly.

 

“So, everything's settled for tonight? You're still goin' through with it?”

Jack gulped his whiskey. He sat with teeth clattering in the Blue Moon Bar with his two new associates. The jukebox was blaring raunchy tunes as hard-bitten gangsters played pool, prostitutes met with regulars, and embittered bartenders mopped up vomit off the floor.

Jack flinched as a dart whizzed past his ear, missing the board by a good foot.

“Um,” he hurried to answer, “Uh, sure! Of course! Guess I'd be crazy to back out now. Heh, heh.” Oh _God, oh God, I wish it wasn't. Really wish it wasn't._

“You sure?” Asked the quieter, thinner man with the long black mustache. “You seem a little hesitant to me.”

Jack shifted his gaze to the drama unfolding by the door, where the barkeep was kicking out a rowdy customer. “No, no! Well...I'm, I'm nervous, sure. Never did anything like this before.”

“What's to worry about,” the small fat one with the greasy mustache said reassuringly. “It's not like you don't know the joint! You worked at Gotham Chemical for a while, right? Be just like going home.”

“Ha ha, yeah...funny, at the time, I thought the card company next door was just...just a billing office, or something. But you really need in that badly, huh?”

Their eyes lost all geniality, deadly serious. “Yeah. We do,” Tall Black Moustache said.

Short Greasy Mustache rubbed Jack's shoulder. “But hey, like we said, don't worry. You and your old lady will be living in luxury. Your kid won't know what poverty even is.”

“Yeah, I guess....” Jack said queasily. “I mean, the worst part, lying to Jeannie, that's over. She thinks I've got an act I'm doing tonight.”

“No reason why she should stop thinking that. No reason at all.”

A waiter appeared at Jack's right. “Excuse me, sir? You'se Jack Napier, right? Louie's kid?”

“Uh, yeah. What can I do for you?”

He pointed to the bar. “Phone for you.”

Jack excused himself and picked up the receiver, plugging his free ear to block out the rambunctious noise around him. “Yeah?”

“Jack!” It was Jeannie, and she sounded positively jubilant.

“Jeannie!” Jack was nervous. “How, how did you know where to find me?”

“I beat it out of Louie with a crowbar. Honey, listen,” she said in a voice bubbling over with excitement. “Did you ever hear me talk about my grandma? Probably not. Well, she's dead. And guess what? Oh, honey, you won't believe it. She left us _$4,000.”_

Jack gripped the counter to steady himself. “...What? Four...four thousand bucks?”

“And her estate just sold her car, too, so we should be getting $500 more!”

He sat down heavily on a barstool. “Oooof. Oh, my God. Baby...baby, do you realize what this means?”

He could hear the smile in her voice. “I sent off your resume this afternoon.”

Tears stung his eyes. “Oh, Jeannie. Oh, Jeannie. You've...you've saved my life.”

“No, Granny did. Oh baby, I love you. Come home soon, will you?”

He laughed. “You bet. I'll be home before you know it. I love you, my darling.” He hung up, elated. “I'm free,” he whispered.

He turned and almost jumped. Tall Black Moustache and Short Greasy Mustache were towering over him. Their eyes were dead, but Short Mustache's voice was light. “What was that all about?”

Jack felt like someone was pouring ice cubes down his spine. “Um, my wife. Uh...look, fellas. I've...I've got some news. See, I....” he coughed. “I, I can't do the job anymore.”

Silence. Staring.

A ball on a nearby pool table clacked against another.

Jack cleared his throat again. “See, that was my wife. On the phone. Her grandmother, she died….”

“Gee. That's too bad,” Tall Black Moustache said in a heavy monotone.

“Tragic,” his partner agreed.

Sweat lined Jack's upper lip. “Um, yeah. But she left Jeannie a real decent pile in her will. Real decent. So...I, I don't need to do this anymore, you know?” He pointed back and forth at them, illustrating “this” with his wildly flailing finger.

He waited.

They stared.

Then Tall Moustache laughed.

Not a pleasant laugh.

With a faux-avuncular hand, he massaged Jack's shoulder as his partner wearily lit a cigar. “Look, Jack,” Tall Mustache said in the smoothest tones. “I don't think you quite have your priorities in order. Nobody drops out now. Nobody.”

“Nobody,” his partner casually echoed.

Jack swallowed. “Yeah, but...there's no reason anymore...Jeannie...Jeannie said....”

He flinched as the tall man in front of him suddenly crushed a nearby whiskey glass with his hand. He yelled in Jack's face, “I don't wanna hear what your wife said, you dumb sonofabitch! You listen to what _I_ say!'

Jack flinched anew as the small fat hand of the other man grasped his coat collar. “And _we_ say tonight is _go-time.”_

Their eyes were narrowed and glittering with malice. With control.

And a buzzing, persistent pounding reverberated in Jack's skull.

It blocked out the sounds around him, the faces at tables close-by that looked toward the commotion.

Anger shot through him from his toes to the base of his skull, pounding, pounding, snapping--

 _“Get your goddamn goombah hands off of me,”_ came a voice out of him that he did not recognize. As if he were trapped inside a violent machine, a silent observer, he saw himself push the short fat man away from him and into the taller gangster.

His attackers stared confounded for a few seconds. Then the short one said in an oddly detached voice heavy with menace, “What...did you...just say to me?”

Some primal demon heretofore unknown to Jack rose from inside him and relished the surprised fear in the men's eyes as he suddenly lunged at them. Jack's clenched jaw and gleaming eyes made him look like some sort of gaunt, gigantic ghoul. “I said stay the hell away from me. Something wrong with your ears, fatso? Now get this through your thick, ignorant skulls: I'm out. _OUT._ You try to stop me walking out of here, and I'll break your goddamn moron arms off and _FEED THEM TO YOU.”_

Absolute, stunning silence in the Blue Moon. Every eye was frozen on Jack.

It wasn't his yelling. They'd heard that before.

It wasn't his threats. They'd heard those before, too.

What they hadn't heard was that tone, hadn't seen that particular fire that lit up his features into a grotesque mask of his usual placid face.

What the denizens there saw was something they could only think of as inhuman.

Most stunned of all were the two partners he confronted.

No one, not even they, stopped Jack as he suddenly slithered with lightning-like quickness out of the bar.

The bang of the door behind him seemed to jolt the crowded establishment back to life.

Some laughed nervously, some made circular motions with their fingers by their heads, sing-songing, “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” Others tried to cough off their discomfiture.

The two men Jack had just left behind were the only ones still silent. Their rage returned by degrees.

Tall Moustache was the first to speak. “That no good lousy punk,” was his gravelly whisper.

Short Mustache inhaled harshly on his cigar, making it sizzle. Then in a harsh exhale, he said, “Time to make a house call.”

 

Fifteen minutes later, a nervous-looking cabbie pulled up to Jack and offered him a ride. Jack gratefully got in, realizing with a smile that he didn't have to worry about spending his pocket money anymore.

_Saved._

So filled with dreams and hopes and love for his wife was he that he cheerfully accepted it when the cab abruptly came to a halt and the cabbie stutteringly informed Jack that the old car liked to stall sometimes.

“I'll – I'll go look under the hood, it's always something to do with the wires on the – on the....” the driver let his words trail off as he quickly closed the door. Without looking his charge in the face, he trudged over to the hood, lifted it, and pretended to shift things around beneath.

Jack simply leaned back into the seat and daydreamed.

He closed his eyes, missing the dark car with his two former associates driving by. Tall Mustache nodded in acknowledgement to the shivering driver at the hood.

The “repairs” took a half hour. Even the euphoric Jack was starting to anxiously check his watch, whistling to distract himself.

At last, the cab continued its journey.

Jack leapt out with a renewed spring in his step. The grizzled flower vendor by the steps looked askance as the tall young man who usually nervously avoided his eye practically jaunted over to him and bought the best bouquet.

Jack jumped two steps at a time, ignoring Mrs. Burkiss yelling at him to keep it down.

The whistle on his lips died only when he saw the state of the apartment.

Jeannie's chair was knocked over, cereal spilled all over the table. His wife was nowhere to be seen.

With the numb movements of a sleepwalker, he picked up the phone when it rang and listened to the instructions that would bring Jeannie back to him safely.

 

A gloved hand reached out of the toxic lake. The dark of the night was so thick that had the Bat that flew away been around, even his keen vision might not have made out the shape that wrenched itself up onto the ground.

He breathed heavily, a strange scratchy noise escaping him. The red hood still covered his head. He groped his way to the lake, gasping and muttering. He collapsed by the bank in front of the water. 

“Christ…Christ, it burns….” He was frightened by the high, twisted voice that came out of his croaking throat.

He grappled with the bucket-hood. “I…I have to see….”

The hood finally came off. He inspected his reflection in the dark waters. 

A heart-wrenching cry of despair.

He was a freak. A monster. A sideshow act.

A clown in truth.

Through his addled mind he saw – not the white skin green hair red lips – but streaked blonde hair and dimples and dreamy gray eyes—

Jeannie. Jeannie needed him.

The grunts and moans as he marched zombie-like back to his home turned into gurgling, hysterical laughter as he saw –

Fire.

The apartment was on fire.

He stood behind the crowd and heard an observer in front say that the poor pregnant lady inside was toast.

He cradled his white head in his hands, the fingers twisted in his green hair. He had to climb down into an uncovered man-hole behind him before the ceaseless laughter escaping him reached the crowd.

 

Humbert drove serenely off the road into the grass. He stopped the car. He was in such a euphoric fog he didn’t even mind that it took a few seconds to open the car door. The blood on his hands made the handle slippery.

When the police finally reached him, he was staring out over the hillside, down to the town below.

Clare Quilty’s murderer was listening to the voice of laughing children playing in the schoolyard a mile away. He imagined Lolita’s was among them.

 

_This is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita._

Humbert finally put down his pen with a sigh.

He had finished. His story – no, _hers_ – was done.

He breathed in the sterile air around him, leaning his head back. The hum of the fluorescent light in the observation room was the only sound for a long, long time.

_Long. Yes, live long, sweet Lo. You deserve the world._

He opened his eyes as he heard the outside lock turn.

Two plainclothesmen he hadn’t seen before entered. Their faces were blank, nondescript.

He tried to greet them with a cool “gentlemen,” but found after his exertions writing, he was drained of all energy. He merely nodded his head in greeting.

The one with the sallow face spoke. “Mr. Humbert? You’re the stepfather of Dolores Haze, right? Alias Jeannie Brown Napier?”

An electric shock down his spine. He stared. How…why are they bringing her up to him? _Leave her alone. It's not to be read until the 21st century. Leave her be._

Without waiting for an answer, Sallow’s companion placed a picture down before him on the table. “This her?”

Humbert’s hands shook. His mouth was dry. It was the picture of Jeannie and Jack, side by side in front of town hall on their wedding day.

The edges were singed. Burned. A brown halo around the couple.

His eyes were dark and penetrating as they lifted helplessly to the two officers before him. “What…what….”

Sallow’s face was grim. “Sir, I’m sorry, but there’s been an accident. Some kind of boiler exploded. Your stepdaughter…well, she died, sir.” A quiet beat. “I’m sorry.”

The eyes gazing at them turned glassy and then emptied. Emptied of everything.

Sallow’s companion cleared his throat. “Hate to break it to you like this. Million to one accident. Mr. Humbert, do you have any information on your stepdaughter’s husband? Jack Napier? From what we can tell, he wasn’t in the apartment at the time, but we haven’t been able to locate him since. I hate to say it, but there’s thought he was involved in a crime at the other side of town involving the Red Hood….”

But Humbert heard nothing and said nothing.

“Mr. Humbert? Mr. Humbert?”

Humbert said nothing then, and nothing later.

He said nothing at all and moved not at all.

Eventually he was transferred to Arkham Asylum. He was unreachable, the doctors said. He would stir no trouble. Comatose patients were more than welcome at Arkham, a pleasant change from the more… _active_ inmates.

Such as that maniac just brought in, the one with bleached skin, ruby lips and green hair, calling himself the Clown Prince of Crime. Compared to that Joker, Humbert was a piece of cake for the staff.

One of the more sensitive nurses trimmed the singed edges off Jeannie and Jack’s picture and placed it in a frame by Humbert’s bed.

 

It was a night late in September, 1959. All that had changed in Humbert’s state was his hair: completely gray now, silver as steel.

As always, he stared ahead blindly up to the ceiling above his bed. Seeing nothing, hearing nothing, perhaps thinking nothing.

He knew not of bats, cats, penguins…clowns….

He'd known nothing for seven years.

He did not even flinch when a sound like a shot in the dead of night rang out – his heavy door unlocking.

Yet the man who entered laughed – and the laugh crept into Humbert’s veins and stirred something.

Still, he did not turn his head. Not even when the stranger’s high, theatrical, sick voice spoke.

“Shh! Be vewy, vewy quiet. I’m hiding fwom doctors! Heh-heh-heh-heh!”

The Joker approached the bed and smirked down at the vegetable lying there.

This was a decent detour on the way out. He could grab some drugs, some sheets. Security wouldn’t expect the Joker in the coma ward. After all, everyone knew the Joker loved an audience, and how pathetic an audience would….

He glanced at the clipboard on the edge of the bed….

“Humbert Humbert?” He barked a sharp laugh. “What a moniker!”

He stared down at the still patient. “No wonder you went loony!” He laughed again. And again.

The moonlight just peeking through the shades threw enough light on the clown’s face for the empty eyes of Humbert to take in –

The lantern jaw. The odd crop of curly hair. Ungainly tall frame. Not a handsome man. But likable….

The Joker stopped laughing when a voice, hoarse with disuse, spoke from the bed. “Jack?”

Lightning straight from Joker's eyes to the now slightly intelligible ones staring at him, staring at him.

Humbert raised an unsteady finger, pointing weakly at the figure leaning over him.

Humbert ignored the green hair, the lips, the skin, the purple trench coat.

“Jack Napier?”

Something shut down in the Joker’s heart.

A voice like gravel poured out of his throat. “Where…did you hear…that name…?”

The gray-haired man’s eyes were now wet with tears. The words he said next meant nothing to the Joker, though they meant the world to Humbert.

“Lo…li…ta….”

The Joker growled and shook the man by his pajama collar, jostling him as if he were a rag doll. “Where did you hear that name, you veg?”

Humber’s mouth hanged open dumbly as his head lolled to the side. His eyes squinted in pain as he took in something on his dresser.

“Lo…li…ta….”

The Joker followed his sorrowing gaze.

And stopped breathing.  
 

Jack and Jeannie smiled back at him, the picture aged and brown but the smiles unchanged.

And ground out in a single hiss of pain from his twisted red lips came, _“Jeannie.”_

Humbert still stared with mouth open at the picture. He was crying.

The Joker had no tears. He was a red cloud of anger. The laughter that always haunted him beat mercilessly at the back of his head until it turned into tortured cries of anguish.  
 

When he looked back down at Humbert, he saw Tall Mustache. Short Mustache. 

The Bat.  
 

Humbert closed his eyes and breathed out again, “Lo….”

His eyes shot open involuntarily as the gloved hands of the shadowy clown closed around his windpipe.

As Humbert’s vision faded, the smiling blonde face in the photograph transformed into a young brunette lounging on her stomach in the backyard, peeking at him over dark sunglasses.

 

When the doctors reached his room, the Joker was gone. Humbert’s eyes were empty again. They stared upward, unblinking.

Until the doctor closed them. The corpse was not yet cold.

The nurse noticed that the picture by his bed was torn in half, the man standing by the woman now gone.


End file.
